~ This blog will be an attempt to explain the significance of various works of great writing, the authors that create them, and some effort to understand correlations between great writing and contemporary events.

I had to pee up to around 10 times when I saw Return of the King in theaters, and that was during my third watching.

Though my condition has improved as I’ve aged, my wife has gone so far as to suggest that I download an app to my phone which actually sets a timer on your phone which coordinates one’s bladder while one is watching a movie.The basic premise is, that way, you won’t waste a lot of time during a movie going back and forth to the toilet.RunPee isnot only an app, it is an entire website where there is a community of fellow pissers who exchange dialogue about when is the best time to get and urinate during a film.I have yet to really dig into the language and psychology of this community because frankly I’m terrified of the reviews of Lawrence of Arabia.I’m terrified they’re going to say the whole film is one long piss-fest, and I like Lawrence of Arabia.

As for my nervous pissing as a teenager, it came about entirely because I didn’t want to miss anything because I knew, as I watched, that this would be the last time I would see Middle Earth on the big screen.I was wrong largely for two reasons.The first reason was that by getting up to pee I was actually missing part of the film, and the second reason was because Peter Jackson would begin The Hobbit trilogy just a few years later.And while The Hobbit films were not the barbarous human rights atrocity that they’ve been made out to be, Billy Connolly plays a dwarf who rides a motherfucking boar and he only shows up in the last hour of the last fucking film for fucks sake…I’m a little bitter.But that’s only because it’s Billy motherfucking Connolly.

Fuck.

The Lord of the Rings the Return of the King was a beautiful film however, and so for many years I hated myself for never actually finishing the book.It was fun knowing how the story ended, and it was fun appearing smart as I informed people who knew nothing about the series (and who probably didn’t give a shit about it) that I knew that in fact that when the Hobbits returned to Hobbiton the Great Party Tree was destroyed andthe Hobbits actually had to fight a large gathering of ghouls and cretins who had polluted the Shire, but it was all, ultimately, just an exercise in ego.That is when I finally finished The Return of the King at the end of last year, I finally felt as though I was not so much of a “would-be.”

Book six of the Return of the King came and went, and I was left in a rather difficult position: how am I going to write about the last book.Book five at least had Eowyn, but for the most part the final section of the book is for Frodo and Sam, and I don’t have much to say about either.It’s not that I fail to recognize the potential for character exploration as both men have interesting material to work with, but by the end of Return of the King both of these characters have been essentially stripped to the bareness of their souls and are nearly destroyed.

The quest for the Ring, and the physical and psychological effects it has upon Frodo have been analyzed by scholars, fans, bloggers, writers, poets, and that weird guy at CVS pharmacy with the neck-beard who’s actually got great puns the world over.Whether it’s been interpreted as a metaphor for drug use, the ultimate corrupting power ofpower, veiled symbolism of unholy temptations, or simply human weakness, ultimately everyone arrives at the same conclusion for why Frodo ultimately fails to drop the Ring of Power into the fire of the Crack of Doom in Orodruin, usually just called Mount Doom: Frodo has no choice.Ultimately the ring corrupts otherwise good people to it’s will, and they are powerless to stop such evil.Temptation is a force that compels and corrupts the will, and those who possess the ring are ultimately undone by this power.

What fool would I be to argue against this interpretation?Apparently a great fool indeed, but I not only disagree with this collected sentiment, I actually find it a dangerous proposition.Though I’m not the only one who find this argument weak.

As I have noted since the start of these essays, Michael D.C. Drout’s lecture series Of Sorcerer’s and Men completely altered my perception of the trilogy and the ultimate aesthetic effect that Tolkien was attempting in this fantasy series, and I’m still feeling the reverberating effects as I consider each text one by one.What struck me most about his analysis of The Lord of the Rings was the final failure of Frodo, and as he quoted the scene directly I suppose I should as well.Sam and Frodo have traveled over the plains of Gorgoroth, and as they made their way up the side of Mount doom they have been attacked by Gollum.Frodo manages to escape and make his way inside of the volcano and after Sam has spared Gollum he chases after his master who he finds standing on the perch.All is darkness until the fire lifts up and Tolkien writes the scene so that every word matters:

The light sprang up again, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone.

“Master!” Cried Sam.

Then Frodo stirred and spoke with a clear voice, indeed with a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoil of Mount Doom, ringing in the roof and walls.

‘I have come,’ he said. ‘But I do not choose now to do what I came to do.I will not do this deed.The Ring is mine!’ And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam’s sight.Sam gasped, but he had no chance to cry out, for at that moment many things happened.(924).

There is always going to be somebody whispering to the reader and saying “the book was better,” and while I won’t say that this scene in the final film of the trilogy was not great, it reinforced the traditional narrative of Frodo’s failure where the book left a more nuanced point.Every word in Frodo’s declaration speaks to the real power of the ring and the effect that it has upon those who bear it or desire it.

If the reader pays close attention to Frodo’s language it is clear what is compelling Frodo is not solely weakness of spirit or supernatural influence, it is choice.Frodo does “not choose” to destroy the ring, instead his choice is to keep it for himself.And this idea of choice is everything because choice is always a matter of one’s personal conviction.A person chooses what color clothes to dress in, what books to read or not read, what films to see, what religion or philosophy should govern their life, what political beliefs they subscribe to, what games to play or not play, and what sort of people they prefer to spend their time with.Each of these choices reflects the character and values of that individual, and those choices are ultimately founded upon a foundation of desire.I choose to spend most of my time reading andwriting, because I desire to communicate to other people in a different way than conversation, dinner parties, or Eyes Wide Shut Orgies every third Tuesdays at Sarah and Jacob’s house (BYOB).These actions coalesce together to create who I am, but it’s always the desire that compels these choices.

The power of the One Ring then is not just to warp a person using evil magic, what’s truly horrifying is that the power of the ringis to warp a person’s choice.

This of course creates problems because most readers would probably prefer a reality where Frodo does not choose to keep the One Ring, because if it his choice it becomes harder for us to forgive his final failure?If it is just supernatural power, magic, temptation, then it’s easy to forgive the man’s weakness.But as long as the final choice to keep the One Ring for himself is his choice the reader has to make an important decision: is it fair to fault Frodo?

This is where I look to outside books, which, in my case, tends to be the entire space of my office which is not just dedicated to coffee stains, cat hair, 3D prints of busts and statues.There’s an entire shelf dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien (which he shares, just for the record, with Ta-Nehisi Coates), and as of this writing a significant amount of space is dedicated to the writings of Tom Shippey.Shippey is a big name in Tolkien studies, largely because he has become a sort of literary successor to Tolkien, assuming the man’s former position at Oxford University and also writing multiple books about the man’s collected work.Shortly after my inhalation of Drout’s lecture I absorbed every book the library hadabout Tolkien and his body of work, and Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century served as one of the first real stimuli of the of my intellectual flood.

That’s all a fancy-pants way of saying I read a lot of Shippey’s work.

Author of the Century is an important book in looking at almost every level of Tolkien’s oeuvre, and there’s no element of the book series that Shippey doesn’t analyze.Whether it’s the linguistic models of character names, parallel mythic structures of themes, literary references contained within the novels, or even simply studying the shorter poetic works of Tolkien, Shippey is often the sort of writer that cuts open the butterfly to see how it works without managing to damage or smudge the original beauty.

Looking at this book then I looked to see how Shippey handles this problem of Frodo’s choice:

With that he puts it on for the sixth and final time.It is a vital question to know whether Frodo does this because he has been made to, or whether he has succumbed to inner temptation.What he says suggests the latter, for he appears to be claiming responsibility very firmly […] Against that, there has been the increasing sense of reaching a centre of power, where all other powers are ‘subdued’.If that is the case Frodo could no more help himself than if he had been swept away by a river, or buried in a landslide.It is also interesting that Frodo does not say, ‘I choose not to,’ but ‘I do not choose to do.’ Maybe (and Tolkien was a professor of language) the choice of words is absolutely accurate.Frodo does not choose; the choice is made for him. (140)

Looking at this passage Shippey seems to come to the conclusion that Frodo has no real say in the matter.But if one looks to another one of his books, The Road to Middle Earth, he provides a far more nuancedperspective:

Nevertheless it seems that there the external power is abetted by some inner weakness, some potentially wicked-impulse towards the wrong side.In the chamber of Sammath Nauer one’s judgement must also be suspended.Frodo makes a clear and active statement in his own evil intention […] Are Frodo’s will, and his virtue, among those powers?To say so would be Manichaean, It would deny that men are responsible for their actions, make evil into a positive force.On the other hand to put the whole blame on Frodo would seem (to use a distinctively English ethical term) ‘unfair’; if he had been an entirely wicked person, he would never have reached Sammath Nauer in the first place.(144)

Shippey seems to arrive at what I would call a really mature understanding of good and evil and the nature of temptation.Like so many aspects of life, one’s actions are usually a multifaceted creature which is determined on your individual self and environment.Who I am and what decisions I make in my own home are entirely different from the decisions I make when I’m at work.Both spaces create my reality and the way I’m supposed to behave in that reality, and before I become ungodly academic about this its fair to say that your environment has as much determining factor on your choices as whether or not external forces play a role in your decisions.

For this I have to go to heavy metal, because just two years ago I went with a friend to see my favorite band Slipknot in concert.They were the last band to go on and my friend Josh really wanted to get in a mosh pit.So when Lamb of God came on, and we were both very very very VERY drunk, he handed me his forty and hopped into the hurricane which was the mass of bodies running and fighting in a large circle.I recognize comparing a Lamb of God mosh pit to Sammath Nauer is probably ridiculous, but in fact it actually bears some resemblance, because while my friend Josh was fine to hop into the chaos that was the pit, I stood at a distance watching grown men and women escape from the carnage with bloody noses and black eyes laughing while on the stage twin guitarists stood in front of atom bombs blowing up and head-banging.I chose not to go into the pit, largely for reasons of self preservation, but also because it was my choice.

A pit in a heavy metal concert is not a force of pure evil, (although “Force of Pure Evil” would be a great title for a Metal Album) but anyone who’s attended a concert knows these “rings” are spaces where rational thought disappears and one is left solely to one’s passions and impulses.

I guess what I’m trying to communicate is that Frodo’s decision is complex, and arguably the zenith of the entire trilogy, because in this moment Tolkien challenges his own conception of evil as something of absence, and allows the reader to question how we look at our own choices.And Shippey, to his credit, provides a beautiful analysis of it.

As to the questions of how far responsibility is to be allocated to between us and our tempters, how much temptation human beings can ‘reasonably’ be expected to stand—these are obviously not to be answered by mere mortals.Tolkien saw the problem of evil in books as in realities, and he told his story at least in part to dramatize that problem; he did not, however, claim to know the answer to it.(145)

The problem of Frodo’s choice is that it is a problem, largely for the reader.Up to this point Frodo has seemed to be a purely good person, or at least a good person who’sexperienced great struggle and has done the best he could.The ultimate choice to keep the ring for himself however calls many character aspects into question.Was this always his intention, and did he intend to keep the ring from the start?Or is it simply that the power of the ring is just too tempting and he realizes what he could be and do with its power?Is Frodo even in his right mind when he makes this decision, or is it the combination of the Ring and the fires of Mt. Doom?

I’m not sure that I have an answer that feels satisfying.My personal take at the end of everything is that, while the Ring is ultimately exerting the influence over Frodo, the extent of that influence is allowing Frodo the space to feel he can make this terrible choice.And at the end of everything perhaps the ultimate power of the One Ring is not that it possesses any sort of supernatural power other than to allow people their selfishness.This is not a terrible supernatural power, but it is a frightening prospect nonetheless for the reader who knows their own mind, and the terrible impulses and sudden desires they may have and not share.

Our wants are not always selfless, in fact almost all of them are selfish.Our wants are our selfish desires, and the real threat of evil is the temptation to act on everyone of them.Frodo was a good person, but ultimately no one could stand against the temptation to do and have everything they want.Frodo’s redemption then is the journey itself, for while he is ultimately a failure, his effort to deliver the ring to Sammath Nauer and Orodruin comes from a want and desire to be a good person and save the home he loves.

Goodness then, at the end of The Return of the King, is about overcoming personal selfishness and sacrificing for the general good.The hero cannot win this fight, because selfishness and temptation is ultimately too great an opponent, this is made clear when Gollum steals the ring from Frodo by biting off his finger and falling back into the fires of Mount Doom.Frodo too cannot escape the destruction of the Ring.He ultimately leaves Middle Earth with Gandalf, Bilbo, and the last of the Elves to the Grey Havens.

Though I suppose all of this is not entirely correct, for at the very end of this long journey is Sam who does not desire or want for much except a home, and good tilled earth.And Tolkien gives the man just that:

At last they rode over the downs and took the East Road, and then Merry and Pippin rode on to Buckland; and already they were singing again as they went.But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more.And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected.And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Eleanor upon his lap.

He drew a deep breath.“Well, I’m back,” he said.(1008).

This ending may in fact offer the reader one more, and far more satisfactory conclusion about the journey.Want and desire is not a solely selfish emotion, and can in fact lead to one’s salvation, as long as one’s wants are not so great to blind one to what you have.

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes taken from The Return of the King were cited from the Mariner paperback edition.All quotes taken from J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century were cited from the hardback Houghton Mifflin edition.All quotes taken from The Road to Middle Earth were cited from the paperback Houghton Mifflin edition.

**Writer’s Note**

I realized not long after finishing this essay that there were multiple forums dedicated entirely to the question of Frodo’s failure, arguing whether in fact his final act is a failure.As I said before, I land in the middle of this issue personally but each person is different, and dialogue is vital to the health of the humanities.So if the reader is at all interested in seeing a few of the multitudinous perspectives which govern the Tolkien fan-base feel free to follow any of the links below:

I get that being a queer man this argument is probably pointless, but it must needs be repeated, I don’t believe that Frodo and Sam are gay. But even if they were that doesn’t make any part of their relationship stupid, silly, grotesque, or not worth exploring, and if you’re the kind of shitty asshole who disagrees with me then go fuck yourself. You take a long and emotionally exhausting adventure carrying the Ring of Power to Oroduin so that you can cast the ring into the fires of Samath Nauer ultimately to be undone by the will to dominate before managing to destroy the ring after all and hold each other close as the land of Morder begins to crumble in the aftermath of the collpase of the spirit of Sauron and NOT develope a bromance. Go on. Seriously. I dare you.

I have a friend at the library who enjoys checking me out. She loves it largely because it affords her an opportunity to make fun of me, while also envying the amount of reading I get done.

It’s not secret to the reader that I have started working at the Tyler Public Library, and in fact it’s getting close on being one year in total working there. Already the staff have welcomed me into the odd little family and some have even noted that it wouldn’t be any fun at the library if I ever left. I honestly don’t believe that at all, but it’s nice feeling like you belong somewhere. Apart from the wonderful social environment that’s steadily building up my sense-of-self day-by-day, working at the library is also a chance to check out enormous stacks of books. There isn’t a day I’ve worked where I haven’t come home with at least one book, and even on days when I return three or four I’m sure to leave with five more. Sometimes these books are ones I’ve simply checked out, other times it’s one that I have bought in the ongoing library sale.

Whatever the case this constant bibliophilia has exposed me to many wonderful books that I never would have found on my own, which is the reason why it’s so surprising that the most recent development has been my rediscovery of Tolkien.

Like many people of my generation I was coming into puberty about the time the Harry Potter series were being published, but in 2001 my world changed when The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released. Hastings was still around at the time, and so video rentals, a.k.a. VHS rentals were still a viable means of seeing films. My dad checked the movie out and actually had to convince me that the movie was worth my time. I remember groaning and sighing, and in fact while watching the film I bemoaned the time length of the movie right before the battle at Amon Hen.

The credits rolled and I was done. I knew that I had to learn more about this universe.

I’d like to say that this meant reading the trilogy, The Hobbit again, and then the numerous companion mythologies and etymologies that Tolkien had spent a lifetime working on, but in fact I largely just consumed the movies and met my best friend Kevin who did nothing but talk about the films which was fine with me.

I did get around to reading Tolkien’s books, but in fact I only got as far as Book III, which is the end of the first half of the second book The Two Towers. I had expected the books to be like the films which were beautiful character studies balanced by great action sequences. What I got instead were long passages of scenery, references to a history and mythology I had no reference for, and an extensive study of linguistics as characters observed words, spoke in different tongues, and related the origin of such language. Obviously I was disappointed, but I still loved this world and began to memorize the territories even starting a fantasy universe of my own with my friend Kevin that went nowhere. Maps and charts were constructed, characters were created, and an evil villain was established. Kevin and I had created an entire universe which was obviously nothing more than a Tolkien reboot.

I don’t regret the time that was spent creating this world, I only wish I had actually written some of it down. There might be a multi-million-dollar fantasy franchise stuffed in a cardboard box in my parent’s attic and I need to find it before Kevin realizes the same thing and screws me out of my share.

Tolkien has returned to me lately because I began an audio-lecture series after finishing Douglas Brinkley’s Cronkite, and my world has shifted dramatically. Michael D.C. Drout’s lecture Of Sorcerer’s and Men: The Roots of Modern Fantasy Literature was a revelation to me because it not only altered my perception of the Lord of the Rings, but much like Poe is the previous year, I was reminded why I loved the man’s work in the first place. Drout explored every facet of The Lord of the Rings and showed me that there was real literary merit to the series and the universe. He argued that rather than just an allegory about war and industry and World War II, The Lord of the Rings was a book about language and the decency of common people.

This brings me back to my original point which is that my co-worker at the library, a lovely woman named Tinkerbelle, enjoys checking me out. After I finished Drout’s lecture series and moved onto Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, I was a man possessed. In-between the various patron needs and printing out another in a long line of classic art statues with the library’s 3-D Printer, I looked up every book available that was either about the life of Tolkien or else written about the man directly. This led me, as soon as my shift ended, into an hour-long search as I scoured the library clean of every book. I lumbered to the circulation desk with a stack that reached my chin and my friend Tink simply laughed before she oohed and awed at the long list of books.

Before I could even get to this stack however, the next day she found in the book sale a small paperback tome entitled The QPB Companion to The Lord of the Rings. With yet another in a long line of giggles she handed me the book and let me disappear into the collection.

What’s fascinating about this book is the fact that so many of the authors who contributed to it seemed to have very little clue about what was the best way to critically approach The Lord of the Rings. Whether it was Ursula LeGuin, Issac Asimov, Harold Bloom, Janet Smith, or Edmund Wilson none of the critics in this small book could ever come to a firm conclusion about what Tolkien was actually trying to accomplish. Many are left puzzled to the man’s lack of modernity in his prose, and some are even more baffled still by the final conclusions of The Lord of the Rings.

I should clarify though before I continue because not everyone is so perplexed. In fact Edmund Wilson in his famous essay Oo, Those Awful Orcs makes his critical assessment of the books quite clear:

It is indeed the tale of a quest, but, to the reviewer, an extremely unrewarding one. The hero has no serious temptations; is lured by no insidious enchantments, perplexed by few problems. What we get is a simple confrontation—in more or less the traditional terms of British melodrama—of the Forces of Evil with the Forces of Good, the remote alien villain with the plucky little home-grown hero. There are streaks of imagination: the ancient tree-spirits, the Ents, wth their deep eyes, twiggy beards, rumbly voices; the Elves, whose nobility and beauty is elusive and not quite human. But even these are rather clumsily handled. There is never much development in the episodes; you simply go on getting more of the same thing. Dr. Tolkien has little skill at narrative and no instinct for literary form. (40).

Wilson finally cuts the bull and lays out his honest opinion in the final paragraphs saying:

The answer is, I believe, that certain people—especially, perhaps, in Britain, have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash. (42).

Besides these words in my little paperback book are written in pencil, “Thems fightin’ words bub!” Perhaps I grew up with too much Loony Tunes, but had anyone spoken so contemptuously about Tolkien or Lord of the Rings when I was a teenager I probably would have screamed at them with the same implication. Still despite the tone Edmund Wilson’s essay does have a point. And I begrudgingly acknowledge most of the criticism.

The Lord of the Rings is many things, but complex in the way a novel by Nabakov is complex is most certainly not the case. Half the time I can’t tell the difference between Merry and Pippin, and in fact Sam and Frodo are at times near indistinguishable. There are long passages about the beauty of Middle Earth but it never feels like the characters are becoming deeper as individuals. They simply are and react to their world, never pausing much for introspection.

Wilson’s critique is severe, perhaps legendary in Tolkien criticism, but I found that Harold Bloom offered much the same sentiment, though in softened tones.

[Roger] Sale accurately observes that the trilogy purports to be a quest but actually is a descent into hell. Whether a visionary descent into hell can be rendered persuasively in language that is acutely self-conscious, even arch, seems to me a hard question. I am fond of The Hobbit, which is rarely pretentious, but The Lord of the Rings seems to me inflated, over-written, tendentious, and moralistic in the extreme. Is it not a giant Period Piece? (53).

I didn’t expect Bloom to respect the novel series given his reputation. Shakespeare is god in the Bloom universe, and despite near ravenous appreciation of Tolkien even I have to admit that compared to the Bard the “Old Professor” (Tolkien Fans charming nick-name for the author) simply doesn’t match up. At least, dear reader, in terms of prose. What I’ll hold against Bloom is that he doesn’t even try to critique Tolkien in any kind of meaningful way and even he acknowledges it citing a passage “pretty much at random” (54). The small two page critique that Bloom offers reveals a great apathy on the man’s part and so the conviction of his criticism is weak.

Then again he’s Harold Bloom and I’m some dude with a blog and a self-published book so perhaps the scales will tip in his favor.

The tone of contempt for Tolkien almost made me drop The QPB Companion for fear that the book would be nothing but people offering fault, and at first Ursula K. LeGuin seemed to offer the same. Anyone who has never heard of this author has cheated themselves for Le Guin, much like George R.R. Martin, manages to be a kind of successor to Tolkien in terms of building the Fantasy and Science fiction genre into the power house that it is. For my own part I prefer LeGuin as an essayist and in her contribution to the collection, The Staring Eye, she manages to convey the lasting importance of Tolkien’s work.

She begins by describing how the books came into her life and why she initially distrusted them. She notes later after remarking that reading the books aloud to her children is her third time with the series that she’s recognized the power of the Eye that was staring at her on the cover.

Yet I believe that my hesitation, my instructive distrust of those three volumes in the university Library, was well founded. To put it in the book’s own terms: something of great inherent power, even if wholly good in itself, may work destruction if used in ignorance, or at the wrong time time. One must be ready; one must be strong enough. (44).

This is most certainly the case and most likely why I didn’t finish the trilogy and had to bear, as Hamlet put it, the “whips and scorns” of my friends who actually had. It’s not that the Trilogy is impossible to read, in fact compared to books like Ulysses and Absalom, Absalom the book is practically Curious George. What I suspect LeGuin is trying to communicate to her reader is that the enormity of Tolkien’s works can be daunting to one individual reader and some may not have the courage or strength of will to complete it.

This has become largely apparent to me as I’ve begun to dig deeper into the meat of The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien himself because what is constantly being reminded to me is that Tolkien was a linguist and a philologist. Unfortunately the nature of this beautiful profession has changed and so it’s important to realize that by Philologist I mean someone who studies the history and nature of language. Absolutely everything in The Lord of the Rings goes back to language, and while I plan to write about this at length at a later date, I think it’s important for the reader to understand just how layered everything in The Lord of the Rings is in terms of Linguistics.

In the aforementioned stack of books that I checked out from the library is a book entitled J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by T.A. Shippey. This book is one of the many canonical books concerning Tolkien and his universe, so much so that even people like Harold Bloom have to acknowledge it’s critical significance to Tolkien Studies. While reading through it, and waiting for an order of tacos at Fuzzys, I happened upon one passage that demonstrates clearly the amount of philology going into just the word Baggins:

Later on, in The Lord of the Rings, it will be disclosed that the road Bilbo’s hole is on is called Bag-End: very appropriate for someone called Baggins, perhaps, but an odd name for a road. And yet in a sense a very familiar one. As part of the ongoing and French-oriented snobbery of English society in Tolkien’s day (and later), municipal councils were (and still are) in the habit of indicating a street with an outlet such as ‘cul-de-sac’. This is French of course, for ‘bag end’, though the French actually call such a thing an impasse, while the native English is ‘dead-end’. ‘Cul-de-sac’ is a silly phrase and it is the Baggin’s Family credit that they will not use it. (10).

It’s no small wonder that if this level of attention was paid simply to a name then of course it would take at least 17 years for Tolkien to finally release The Lord of the Rings. The book series is constantly introducing new characters and territories that each have their own unique names which are born from the mythology which is born in the Philological studies that Tolkien worked on, both creatively and professionally.

Words are the basis of this universe and so critics looking for anything akin to Freudianism and Marxism were doomed to failure. And thus the critics turned to allegory.

Le Guin acknowledges this and notes that this avenue of critics is perhaps most responsible for the revulsion of Tolkien. She writes:

It is no small wonder that so many people are bored by, or detest The Lord of the Rings. For one thing, there was the faddism of a few years ago—Go, Go, Gandalf—enough to turn anybody against it. Judged by any of the Seven Types of Ambiguity that haunt the groves of Academe, it is totally inadequate. For those who seek allegory it must be maddening. (It must be an allegory! Of course Frodo is Christ!—Or is Gollum Christ?) (45).

This last portion is unbearable to read, not because I’m an atheist, but because I grew up in the church and attended a private Christian school. I remember the teachers, priests, coaches, principles, and at times even my own English teachers of whom I had absolute trust, shoveling at me that The Lord of the Rings was one big metaphor for Jesus. I’m not arguing that the material isn’t there. Tolkien was a lifelong Catholic, so much so that he was offended when the church dropped the Latin mass. There’s stories of the Old Professor standing up during the English mass and calling out the original Latin much to the pain and embarrassment of his family who had to bear his philological and religious devotion. This old narrative interpretation is painful though because of its predictability. Whenever and wherever there is a sacrifice made Christians attack the body of the work, performing surgery to cut out that ounce of Christian sentiment or interpretation to ensure that they “have always been around.”

The allegory is a great means of criticism, but LeGuin clearly isn’t satisfied by this interpretation and neither am I. The problem with allegory is that it’s simple. A stands for [Symbol 1] and B stands for [Reference 13], and in such a dynamic the critics is not so much a thinker and philosopher, but instead a child connecting dots to the right cultural reference.

Le Guin offers the reader something far more profound at the end of The Staring Eye, as she notes that Tolkien is elusive to critics and that in itself is a kind of artistic legacy:

Those who fault Tolkien on the Problem of Evil are usually those who have an answer to the Problem of Evil—which he did not. What kind of answer, after all, is it to drop a magic ring into an imaginary volcano? No ideologues, not even religious ones, are going to be happy with Tolkien, unless they manage it by misreading him. For, like all great artists, he escapes ideology by being too quick for its nets, too complex for its grand simplicities, too fantastic for its rationality, too real for its generalizations. They will no more keep Tolkien labeled and pickled in a bottle than they will Beowulf, or the Elder Edda, or The Odyssey. (46).

Despite my training in graduate school, this final absence of solid critical foundation leaves me with some hope. I’ve struggled since I started The Fellowship of the Ring to find any kind of solid critical lens from which to understand Tolkien’s aesthetic. And as I read deeper into the man and his work this absence is not becoming distressing, in fact it’s encouraging. This sense of opportunity is what informs my reading of Tolkien and I see a new range of possibility for the reader of Tolkien.

The QPB Companion is not going to be a book that lasts into the future, but this was never in fact about one single volume. Rather this is about the critics of Tolkien who have, as I’ve read them, misunderstood or simply missed Tolkien’s creative goals. The critics continue to this day to dismiss Tolkien, and while there is some artistic elitism in this behavior, my assessment is that most of the critics of Tolkien are simply caught up in the tradition of theoretical framework.

In literary criticism there is a mode which pushes analysis, and by extension the critic, to write their assessment of a work based upon their training. The problem with Tolkien then is that much of his work escapes most contemporary critics because far too many of them are looking for Post-Modern explanations or else allegory.

Tolkien requires something more. The critics who have mattered then tend to be writers themselves. Tolkien as a writer, and The Lord of the Rings as a series, is an exploration of language and myth, and it is run by rules of behavior that contemporary literature simply doesn’t.

This is not a critical manifesto, nor do I make a grand declaration for a new mode of critical theory. I simply speak as a writer and as a reader. Tolkien’s work attempts to explore a different territory of literature, where word and deed are ends unto themselves, and the depth of character comes from action rather than introspection. This won’t suit many sensibilities, but the continued success of Tolkien has demonstrated that, even if critics snap harshly at Tolkien’s “deplorable cultus,” most of them won’t care anyway.

Hobbit Holes and Nazgul promise endless opportunities for adventure and analysis, and at least one second breakfast with bacon and tomatoes.